Alae, 16 years old, and Jose Angel17, have given voice this morning, Tuesday, October 8, to the mental health problems that they have experienced firsthand and that they also frequently observe among kids around them. They are in their first and second years of high school respectively, and they complain, among other factors that trigger their discomfort, about social pressure to maintain good relationships, family pressure to get good grades, and stress. They also admit, says Alae, that “bullying” disrupts everything and influences that “if you are not integrated, if you feel excluded in your class for example, you do not feel like continuing studying, you want to leave your studies, you do not feel like talk to your parents or play with your siblings.
The fourth edition of the UNICEF Children’s and Adolescents’ Opinion Barometer 2023-24, published today and prepared in collaboration with the University of Seville, says that More than four in ten, 41.1%, of adolescents in Spain say they have had mental health problems in the last twelve months or believe they have had them. Because many are not sure, they doubt it, they do not properly identify the root of their concern. When they seek help and advice, they do so first in their friends (73.6% of them) and in second place in the psychologist (more than 609%). But almost half of those who have had or believe they have had a mental health problem have never asked for help.
Alae and José Ángel have also explained the reasons: due to the desire to keep the problems secret (almost seven out of ten), because time will solve everything or because they distrust their educators. More than half of the young people interviewed (56%) do not believe that the staff at their educational center will help them at all. As these two young people have expressed today, it is necessary to break down taboos and the stigma that still persists about why a young person needs psychological help or from an educational counselor. “You still think about what they will say if you go to a counselor’s office to talk,” said the young man, while his fellow member of the Unicef advisory committee stressed that the message for young people has to be “it’s okay not to be okay».
Problems can become chronic
According to experts and the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is an essential component of the comprehensive well-being of young people, especially during adolescence, a critical developmental stage in which emotional, social and mental skills are consolidated. fundamental cognitive What we wanted to emphasize in this report is the need for collaboration between different social and academic agents to promote the well-being of adolescents.
To do this, in addition to Alae and José Ángel, the authors of the research led by Pilar Ramos, During the last 2023-24 academic year, they interviewed nearly 5,000 boys (4,740 adolescents aged 13 to 18) from 168 educational centers in Spain, public, subsidized and private, Ramos highlighted in the press conference held today. Ramos herself has explained that to ask the young people they started from a definition of a mental health problem prepared by a panel of experts and that it has nothing to do with what is usually identified as such, schizophrenia, depression and spectrum disorder. autistic. The definition that was given to the boys was the alteration in their physical or mental health due to a problem in their normal functioning.
According to the WHO, approximately Between 10% and 20% of adolescents experience mental health problemsl throughout the world and half of all mental illnesses begin before the age of 14 and this is, the authors have explained, because part of those discomforts typical of a stage of evolutionary development such as adolescence are not addressed well, they are become chronic and lead to serious disorders. There is a section of the opinion barometer where half of adolescents express that they have “self-efficacy” to manage their mental health on their own, compared to a quarter of them (one in four) who are unable to cope.
According to the State of the World’s Children report that Unicef published in 2021, the pandemic exacerbated mental health challenges in young people.
Social networks, a space that should not be “demonized”, Unicef has asked, because they support a lot of information and help also for young people, are nevertheless a minefield for many. Many of them state that they show in their profiles “perfect lives” that they do not have, more so in the case of girls than in that of boys. They are the ones who perceive the most the impact related to feeling pressure to have a certain physique, the study concludes. Half of teenagers consider networks such as X, Instagram and TikTok “quite or very dangerous” for their mental health.
One in four teenagers believe that people with mental health problems still feel ashamed. In general, boys tend to have a more negative view than girls towards people who suffer from this type of discomfort.
The relationship with parents
When asked about how adults view them, nearly half of the adolescents interviewed feel that they are seen as too sensitive and vulnerable if they have a problem.
It should be noted that eight out of ten young people value the relationship with their parents, receiving support from close people and doing things that they like and that make them feel good in order to maintain a good state of mental health.